Edie Arnold is a Loser is a fun, feminist coming-of-age comedy that completely charmed the hell out of me. The film follows the titular Edie Arnold (Adi Madden Cabrera) and her best friend Frances (McKenna Tuckett), two Catholic schoolgirls who, after attending their first punk show, decide to start a band with classmates called the Nun Dead—get it? Edie isn’t exactly popular, but when a hunky altar boy asks her out after hearing about the band, her budding music career is thrown into chaos. Suddenly, she’s forced to confront some hard truths and choose between romance and creative self-expression.
Hilarious as it is wholesome, the film feels like Booksmart meets a gender-swapped, less toxic Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Before the film premiered I got to chat with not only the directors of the film Kade Atwood and Megan Rico, but the leads as well Edie herself Adi Madden Cabrera and her bestie Frances – McKenna Tuckett, it was a fun and enlightening chat about just what went into this crafting this great little coming of age tale.
First off, congrats on the film. It charmed the hell out of me. I’ll start with Kade and Megan—how did you two meet and decide to co-direct a film together?
Kade: We met working on a TV show in Provo, Utah, which is a very small town. We ended up living together with four other guys in a place we called “Dude House.” Honestly, I don’t know if we would’ve become friends otherwise.
Megan: Because Kade is quiet and I’m loud.
Kade: We just had really different personalities, but living together kind of forced us to get to know each other and we realized we’re actually very similar.
So Kade, you’re the Edie and Megan, you’re the Frances?
Megan: Kind of, yeah. I don’t think we’ve ever made that exact connection before, but that’s actually pretty accurate.
Kade:There were definitely moments while we were shooting where I thought, “Yeah, Adi and I are the same, and Megan and McKenna are the same.” There are just two personality types.
This question is for everyone. The heart of the film is really the friendship between Frances and Edie. What was the casting process like, and how did you bring that chemistry to life?
Adi: One thing I loved about the casting process was that we obviously sent in self-tapes first, but the second callback was basically a chemistry read. We were paired with a bunch of different actors and tried different scenes together. It made it really easy to see who you had natural chemistry with. I think McKenna and I realized pretty quickly that we clicked.
McKenna:No, there was literally a moment in our first chemistry read where we were doing this really fast back-and-forth scene, egging on Iggy. We got so into it that when the scene ended we just looked at each other like, “Did that just happen?” It felt like we suddenly were Frances and Edie. It was this magical little click.
Megan: For Kade and I, the casting process was really important because we wanted actors who looked age-appropriate. We wanted actual teens playing teens. That meant we’d likely be working with a lot of first-time actors, which ended up being true. So we tried to make the audition process feel more like a workshop so people could relax and show what they were capable of.
Adi is a great example. Her self-tape was good, so we called her back. But during the chemistry reads I watched her confidence grow. She just kept getting better and better and really settling into the character. We’re really proud of the approach we took—it paid off.
It definitely shows. And speaking of that, Adi and McKenna—this is literally the first credit on your IMDb pages. What was it like jumping straight into a feature film? And what kind of guidance did Kade and Megan give you?
Adi: It was terrifying. The audition was my first in-person audition ever. But meeting Kade and Megan really helped calm my nerves. Their approach made it easier to focus on the character instead of worrying about everything else. I still had moments of imposter syndrome on set, but at the same time I kept thinking, “This is the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
McKenna:It’s easy to be nervous when you care about something this much. But from the moment I got the audition invite, there was this feeling like, “If you do this, it’s going to be good.” Meeting Kade and Megan helped too. If these incredibly smart filmmakers trusted me enough to cast me, then I had to trust myself too.
Adi:Yeah, that’s way true.
Important question: did you have braces growing up? Or was that headgear experience totally new?
McKenna: I actually had braces. The fake braces in the movie were made using my real retainer—they glued brackets onto it. I remember asking during rehearsals if I should give the character a lisp, and they were like, “No, you’ll be fine.” But the moment I put the retainer in, suddenly I had lines like “Walter Boyd’s Jizz-stravaganza,” and I was like… “Let’s try that again.”
Megan: There was just too much spit in that thing.
It honestly adds to the comedy. Some of those lines land even harder because of it.
For Kade and Megan—the Catholic school setting makes the characters’ rebellion feel both intimate and a little loaded. Why use that environment instead of the typical high school backdrop? Was it based on personal experience?
Megan: Yeah, I went to an all-girls Catholic school. It wasn’t really a conscious choice to make some big statement—it just felt authentic to what I knew.
Those schools can have a lot of really strict, sometimes kind of arbitrary rules. I thought I was a bad kid growing up because I was constantly getting in trouble. But when I later talked to people who went to public schools, they’d ask what I got in trouble for and I’d say things like “my shirt was untucked” or “I forgot my uniform belt.” It was all these tiny infractions.
What I like about the setting is that the girls in the film are actually good kids. But because their world is so rigid, they end up feeling like bad girls—even though they’re really not doing anything that bad.
Another thing I loved were the animated flourishes throughout the film. When did those come into play? They almost reminded me of Scott Pilgrim, but in a more wholesome, non-toxic version.
Kade: It’s funny you mention that because Scott Pilgrim was definitely a reference early on. But we were hesitant because we didn’t want to just copy that style. We couldn’t quite figure out how to make it our own.
Eventually we stumbled into the idea during post-production. It wasn’t something we planned from the beginning.
And I should mention—Megan hand-drew all of those.
Megan: Yeah… my eyes will never recover.
I think we hesitated because everything else in the film was very carefully planned from the start—we storyboarded the entire movie. So we had to make sure the animation actually served the story instead of just being an extra flourish.
We decided to use it whenever the girls are fully inside their own imaginative world. It’s like a little window into their heads. And then I drew them… and animated them… which took a while.
They’re fantastic.
Final question—what’s next for everyone, besides surviving SXSW?
Megan:Kade and I are already working on the next project. Hopefully a sci-fi comedy. After SXSW I’m diving into a rewrite.
Adi: Hopefully just more acting. That’s the goal.
McKenna: Same here—just staying on the acting train. And I’ll probably start an acting training program at a Utah college in the fall.
Awesome. Well, congrats again on the film. If this movie is any indication, I think we’ll be seeing a lot more from all of you.
Interesting title for a film! Was there a particular moment or scene that stood out during the chat?